What the Fox Knows

The spinach had gone slimy in the crisper drawer, exactly like everything else in my life after David left. I stood in the kitchen of our—the apartment—holding the bag of wilted greens like evidence of a crime. Four days abandoned. That's all it took for fresh organic spinach to turn into something unrecognizable. Same as our marriage, apparently.

The sunset through the window was violent orange, the kind that makes you believe in God or cosmic indifference, depending on your mood. I was feeling distinctly cosmic-indifferent tonight. The orange light caught on the wine glass I'd left on the counter since Tuesday, and I thought about how David used to say I lived in organized chaos, as if it were charming instead of what it was: barely functional.

Movement outside caught my eye. A fox—a real one, russet and sleek—stood on the fire escape, staring at me through the glass. Not mangy. Not scared. Just watching, like it knew something I didn't.

"You looking for dinner too?" I asked it. My voice cracked. I hadn't spoken out loud in thirty-six hours.

The fox tilted its head. Then it turned and vanished into the urban twilight, wild and silent and entirely unconcerned with mortgage payments or whose turn it was to call the lawyer.

I threw the spinach in the trash. Peel an orange—the last one in the bowl—and ate it standing over the sink, juice running down my wrists, sticky and tart and alive. The fox was right about something. Some things you don't fix. You just move on, one small sharp moment at a time, into whatever comes next.

Tomorrow I'd call Sarah. Tomorrow I'd find a new apartment. Tonight, I'd finish this orange and let myself be exactly as broken as I was, and trust that this, like everything else, would eventually become something else.